And the ‘Sustainability Now’ Best Social Media individual is … er me!

Well, that was a nice surprise! This afternoon I learned that I had won Best Social Media Individual in the Sustainability Now social media awards, and that Be2camp, which I co-founded, had won Best Social Media Community.

First run in 2008 (post), Sustainability Now is a two-day virtual conference and exhibition organised by UBM, which also publishes industry weeklies Building, Building Design and Property Week, among other titles. Some awards – eg: best blog post, best tweet – were decided by public votes (if we’re being social, we should call on the ‘wisdom of the crowd’), but others were decided by a panel of judges from UBM.

As one might expect from an online event, the winners of all the social media awards were announced online. This took place over two lunchtime sessions, each lasting half an hour, with participants invited to “attend” a text-based chat-room, where the results were relayed to the accompaniment of written drum-rolls (“bbbrrrrr”) and rapidly typed audience heckles. All good fun.

All in all, it was a good result for people associated with Be2camp. I was delighted yesterday when Mel Starrs, a long-time supporter of Be2camp events, won the Best Blog award for Elemental, and even more pleased today when Be2camp itself secured the community badge. But I was a little dismayed when Liz Stanley said the award for SM individual was between me and one of the other Be2camp co-founders, my friend Martin Brown. At this point, I seriously wanted it to go to Martin (who does some serious blogging at Fairsnape on sustainability issues after all), but was nonetheless chuffed when my name appeared on the screen and the congratulations started flying – both in the chat-room and via Twitter – from Be2camp regulars and others.